By Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor (Canada-Ukraine), Times Asian
Yuliia Bilous is a Ukrainian project and course manager in women’s transport leadership. She manages Керуй змінами (“Lead Change”), a programme supporting women’s professional development in Ukraine’s transport sector.
Kateryna Datsko is Executive Director of the NGO Foundation for Institutional Development and an expert on institutional capacity, compliance, and women’s transport leadership. She manages She Drives. Connected to Керуй змінами (“Lead Change”), she supports programmes advancing women’s retraining, employment, gender-equal workplace standards, and sectoral reform with Ukrainian and international partners.
With Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Kateryna Datsko and Yuliia Bilous outline She Drives’ next phase: reskilling over 150 women, employing at least 50, monitoring retention, strengthening the Association of Women in Transport, and confronting low municipal salaries, hard schedules, regional participation gaps, automation questions, and stereotypes through long-term institutional change in Ukraine’s wartime transport sector.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What targets have you established for the second phase in terms of reskilling, employment, and institutional development?
Kateryna Datsko: In the second phase, we have plans for more participants. We plan to select more than 150 participants across both categories. Our second goal is not only reskilling, we also plan employment for women. We aim for more than 60% of these women to be employed in municipal and private sectors. This phase lasts one year, until the end of 2027. During this period, we work not only on reskilling but also on the association. So, in terms of reskilling and employment within one year, we plan to support more than 150 women.
Yuliia Bilous: Yes, we want to reskill more than 150 women and employ 50 women. At least 50 women, because this is an indicator for our international partner. But we hope that employment will exceed 50.
Jacobsen: Another factor following reskilling and hiring is retention. How long do women stay in transport, and how would you measure this appropriately? How would that compare to men? That is also important, and I have a follow-up question.
Datsko: This is an issue. We faced this after the previous stage. Some of our women were employed in municipal enterprises, but then they quit because of insufficient conditions, low salaries, and hard schedules. Some are still looking for another job in this sphere, in other enterprises, and some have left and returned to their previous occupations.
But we also have success stories in large international carrier companies, MHP, FlixBus, and KLR. This is a Ukrainian company, but they have international operations and transportation; and these women are still working.
More than two years. But in the municipal transport sector, the main challenge is low salaries, on average 12 to 15 per month. This is in dollars.
Bilous: We are still in touch with all these women, but we do not ask about their current employment status periodically. We stay in touch on certain occasions, we invite them to informational campaigns, panel discussions, and similar activities.
Jacobsen: Could you do a formal survey?
Bilous: Actually, in one project, not She Drives, but another one on engaging women in the logistics sector, supported by IFC, we reskilled women as foreign economic activity managers. They completed the training and obtained diplomas. We have a commitment with IFC to conduct a survey every two months to track their employment status until the end of 2027. In that project, we do this.
Datsko: But in this project, if you are talking about She Drives, this was the first, pilot stage, and now we have the second stage. We still stay connected with participants from the first stage. As you mentioned, we have the Association of Women in Transport, which serves as a communication platform for participants. We share vacancies with them from our business partners and municipal enterprises. So we have some level of monitoring of our participants.
Jacobsen: What are the main forms of transport that women take part in here? In other words, I am asking more specifically, not just women in transport, but whether they prefer long-range truck driving, trams, or other forms.
Bilous: In Ukraine, women have traditionally preferred trams and trolleybuses, municipal electric transport. I do not know for certain, but this may have been considered safer for women.
Now we see more and more women working as taxi drivers in large cities in Ukraine. I cannot say the same for smaller or rural cities. We are also attracting women as bus and truck drivers, but we cannot say that we have many examples of women as international bus drivers, because that requires more time and effort.
So mostly, within cities, women are involved in passenger transportation. When we talk about truck drivers, it is mostly within the country. We do have a few examples of international truck drivers, but not many.
Of course, we also have railway transport. I cannot speak about train drivers specifically, as I do not know the statistics. We also have sea transport, and before the war we had air transport, but it is currently stopped. There were many women there, mostly in administrative roles or as flight attendants, but not as pilots or co-pilots. This is the general situation.
Jacobsen: In the North American context, self-driving cars are becoming more prominent. Tesla has had varying success, and Waymo operates a successful taxi service in certain cities. Another industry likely to be affected is long-range trucking. There are viable cases of automation there, and companies may reduce costs by not hiring drivers and using electric semi-trucks. Regardless of the impact on workers, this could be attractive to large corporations. Does this present a potential threat to women’s employment in this sector if AI or autonomous vehicles partially take over?
Bilous: We cannot say this is a threat. We have a shortage of more than 6,000 bus drivers, so if AI or similar technologies help reduce this shortage, it could help us. We attract women to these positions not because conditions are ideal, but because we have a significant labor gap. That is one reason; another is equality and equal opportunities for everyone. From my perspective, this is not a threat to the industry. Perhaps Kateryna will have another opinion, but I do not see it as a threat.
Datsko: The transport sector in Ukraine has demonstrated strong resilience during the war. What happens after the war may become a best practice not only for Ukraine but for other countries.
Jacobsen: What do you consider your biggest victory or success so far?
Datsko: The biggest success is that we are able to cooperate with our participants and work with them in a new field. This includes the association, institutional support, and an institutional step in this sphere, because this is the first organization of this type.
Perhaps our success is small, but the success stories of our participants are important. We see some of them in the booklet, but there are more. Communication results are also important, we have social advertising about women in transport, about women drivers. This is the first project in Ukraine at this level with such a component.
Jacobsen: How much coverage did your communication campaign achieve?
Datsko: 500,000 in communication coverage. Maybe this is not yet a success, but in my view, this is the first step toward changing the corporate culture of our municipal companies. This is a very long-term effect, but with this project we have started very important work.
This includes work on corporate culture and addressing gender stereotypes in this sphere, because they exist. Now we are discussing these issues not only within our organization, but also at the level of the Ministry and on international platforms. So this is a kind of systemic success, a combination of small success stories and successful practices.
Bilous: Perhaps I can add that we were the first to start this, and we have achieved our initial goals and continued the project. We have not changed many lives yet, but this is the beginning at the level of the whole country.
As we proceed with institutional approaches, gender policies and changes in working conditions, this influence on the industry may make it more attractive for women in the future. With changes in cultural biases, that women cannot take these positions, and so on, we cannot yet speak about a major success, but we have started successfully.
We believe that all our efforts will lead to more significant successes in the future. This is a long-term impact, and we believe our projects will have an effect across the whole country and the entire sector.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Kateryna and Yuliia.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Canadian journalist and publisher who serves as Times Asian’s Editor for Canada and Ukraine Affairs and writes on international affairs.
